It was 1977 when Alex Haley entranced America with his story of Kunta Kinte, his 7th generation removed relative, one of the Mandinka people in Gambia. That winter was a brutal one in the Northeast, and we were happy to spend multiple cold and stormy nights on the couch watching Haley trace his roots. The fact that I was expecting my first child that year possibly whetted my interest more than others, but it seemed like that TV series set us all on a journey looking for our own roots. Fast forward forty years, and DNA technology has again prodded us into a revived desire to know from whence we came.

I always knew that my father’s family was German. Just my father’s name, Carl Rudolph, would be a big clue. Add to that the fact that he and his siblings would speak German whenever they didn’t want us children to know what they were talking about. Sauerkraut was a suppertime staple, along with smoked sausage that we made every year on my grandparents’ farm. In the morning it was coffee and kuchen. And then there were the parties, lots of parties, with plenty of beer and accordion music.

I also knew that we were from the northern, Protestant part of Germany. We were all baptized and confirmed in the Lutheran Church (more reasons to party). When they left the farm, the men in the family worked with motors or tool and die. The women were sewers and quilters. But that’s where my knowledge ended. How I regret not asking more questions. In my defense, I have to say that children during my childhood years were not encouraged to ask questions, and my grandparents’ generation didn’t seem to want to talk about the old country.

Lately I had been wondering what the last straw was, the final thing that made a family or families leave their homes to risk travel across a great ocean and start a new life on a whole new continent. That’s when I re-connected with my cousin Linwood Bandemer, who had been compiling a Bandemer family history. Linwood believes that it wasn’t one inciting moment that made our family leave Germany, but rather a compilation of circumstances. There was conflict between farmers (our family) and rich landowners and also conflict between Catholics and Lutherans. And there were letters from relatives who had already migrated to America and told of all the opportunity here.

That answered that question, but then Linwood took me by surprise. He had found our hometown, Speck, and even found a more distant cousin named Henry who provided us with a photo of the house our ancestors lived in. The big surprise to me was that the house and the town are actually in Poland and not Germany. So now what? Am I really Polish and not German? To be sure, Germans and Poles have a lot in common, and Speck, my grandmother’s village was part of Pomerania, which was a part of Germany from 1871-1918. But this causes me to think more about who I am and where I came from.

I’ve found that delving into family history often raises more questions than it answers, but I think a curiosity about our roots is a part of the human condition and fun to ruminate on. And I think I’ve got one thing figured out. The fact that my family goes back to Speck (in German), or Gac (in Polish), or Bacon (in English), may explain why I like fried slices of pork meat so much. Who wants to join me for a BLT?